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Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11/11

Today is the 10th anniversary of the darkest day of our lifetime. It is not as if we need much of a reminder. The mass murders wounded us seriously. We sat up all night, and looked at the photos of the dead. We looked at our children. And we wept.

We remember. No video replays are necessary. Send the marching band home.

Where were we when we heard the news? The same place everybody was -- enjoying the last few minutes of a different country.

Has anything positive come out of 9/11? It would be lovely if there was something we could point to and say, "It was all for the greater good." We took care of the victims' families, maybe. Compared to the blood that has been shed, and the liberties lost, that's not much. Shining beams of light into the sky, building a fountain, converging on the murder scenes in a media frenzy, a million flags -- what's the point? "Here," we seem to say to the murderers. "Here's where you killed our innocent loved ones, out of the blue."

Yes, they did. Then we retaliated. We're still retaliating. The bad guys are still coming after us. And our government looks less like the good guys than it ever did.

We grieve today for the dead, and remember the courage of the police, firefighters, and others who knowingly climbed to their deaths saving others. As for the videos and photos of the carnage? Thanks, but you can put those away.

Perhaps the saddest part of 9/11 is that so many people sense that the government may not have told the public the entire truth about the tragic events. In particular, the collapse of World Trade Center 7 looks far more like a controlled implosion than a building that fell because it was on fire, or hit by debris hours earlier. Some of us would rather believe our eyes about that than trust what the powers that be tell us. You can make up your own story line from there, and alas, given the credibility of American government over the past decade, many people have.

Comments (65)

The darkest of all thoughts is that Bush-Cheney were complicit in the entire thing as a means to enrich the military industrial complex and continue the erosion of individual rights in this nation in favor of the enrichment of a precious few. The Bush family was friends with the Bin Laden family. And an FBI agent's warnings months earlier were ignored. And for all the alleged prowess of the FBI and CIA, it's odd that something that well planned just accidentally slipped by. And Bush was put in the air quickly. So what if the heroes on flight 93 had not taken that plane down before it hit its target. The target was free and clear.

On the day itself and the near aftermath, I wanted to bomb all Arabs into the stone ages. I am beyond that rage now. I was worried about a lot of friends and family I know in the Boston and greater NY area. Many of them frequent business travelers. One who could have been on that plane from Boston to LA that day. Her company decided to send her West the following day but of course that flight was cancelled. She took those flights every other week back then. Another friend, a Fidelity exec got stranded in So. Carolina and had to wait 3 days before she and her team could find a rental care to drive back to Boston. In the end I lost no one (though for awhile I thought one of my law school friends went down on a Boston flight - same first name and a last name I misheard on the news). But friends of mine did lose people.

However, I now have a far greater rage about the erosion of our personal freedoms. And the abuses of power within our government, within the FBI, CIA, TSA, etc.

And we have learned nothing about pulling together. We have in fact become more divided than ever.

Yes, WTC 7 is a mystery. Why did it fall so neatly and why did it fall at all? But if one speculates about it you end up in some in some mind-bogglingly scary places. Who put the charges in, when did they do it, who detonated it, and why. It's not something that could've been done in one day. A crazy place to put your head.

All you need to do is google "911 conspiracy debunked." There is more than enough information and evidence regarding the collapse of building 7 due to severe loss of structural integrity, debris from the collapsing tower, on and on. You can read the comments from firemen and reporters taken completely out of context, the physics involved in the raging inferno leading to the ultra-high temperatures, etc., etc., etc.

But those who seem unable to believe the almost unfathomable events of 9-11 will continue to shroud reality with even more mystery and conspiratorial nonsense. Why, I don't know. But I'm sure it must be a fascinating psychological study.

As far as the buildings' collapses looking like controlled demolitions... Really? Remember, it sure looks like the sun travels around the earth, so it must be, right?

Popular mechanics has just refreshed a book from 2006 that puts to rest in a scientific manner all of these wild thoughts.

Isn't ironic that a birther is a first degree kook (which they are). A truther however; can hang on to what they saw on tv and know deep in their heart Bush/Cheney/Military industrial complex/CIA/FBI all complicit in it.

That you claim "No building has ever fallen in that manner, before or since, except with the help of demolition explosives." suggests you don't think something can happen for the first time ever. This event was unprecedented. There are certainly hundreds of "first time" events that took place on 9-11. I don't know why an occurrence necessarily needs to be refuted simply because it's the first time such a thing has happened.

And I'm not believing what I "want" to believe. That's just it. I don't "feel" there's something wrong with the official story - which I witnessed real time just like the rest of us. I've simply analyzed the data to the degree that I believe we were attacked by terrorists and taken by surprise inexcusably, since the warnings were there, but not taken seriously. The event is horrendous enough without having to add additional layers of conspiratorial mystery.

the anniversary of 9/11 is about the memory of the victims of the attacks and a chance for each of us who witnessed it to reflect on its meaning in our lives.

what's clear to me is that the bush administration started lying IMMEDIATELY and the lies never stopped. those lies were the fuel that bush used to drive our military into iraq and afghanistan with devastating and continuing consequences. (today i remember the countless unknown innocent victims in those countries as well and try not to see the stain of their blood on my hands.)

the patriot act was written well before 9/11 and was waiting on someone's desk for the right time to pass.

(turns out obama has continued the lies, likes to start his own wars and has done nothing to repeal the patriot act or discontinue spying on the american people.)

When you say "such as this", I'd be interested what other wealth of information you can point to?

And here's a more interesting question: ever looked into who runs that site? No? I did.

An even more interesting question: ever look into the connection between that site and the "Popular Mechanics" article? I did, and there is one.

I don't have concrete answers about that day. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I do have *one* theory, though--and that's that America seems to be stupider and less critical-minded by the year.

It's as if questioning *anything* (like, say, reports about WMD materials in Nigeria) brings a hailstorm of hateful, dismissive, propagandic rhetoric that, ironically, tries to paint all questioning as anti-intellectual.

And that's the worst part of the post-9/11 world, in my opinion; I'm being shouted down by something called the "Tea Party" when I point out that my own government is helping Wall Street to destroy the American economy.

Rock on, patriots. History of full of people wrapping themselves in flags, and nations wrapping themselves in patriotism. One of them referred to the Fatherland. Another, the Motherland. Now, we've got the Homeland.

Even in a vacated building devoid of any internal furniture or structures? I can tell you from personal experience that the installation of a SINGLE cat5 wire in an unserved area of the Rose Garden involves drilling thru concrete floors and walls and routing thru ridiculously awkward places.

Yet a controlled demolition involves the precise placement of hundreds of explosives all wired together to detonate in a precisely synchronized sequence. This would involve a large demolition crew and many, many man-hours and disruptions long before the events of 9-11.

So the other white meat thinks that it was Bush/Cheney and Popular Mechanics giving them cover all the while. I'd like to spend more time in this, but I'm off to Hollywood to see the moon landing lot, I'll make sure to take lots of pictures.

"pj" is a poster child for the America I was referring to. Superficial, extreme, and mostly interested in personal ridicule rather than what patriotism in America originally meant (hint: it has nothing to do with flags, armies, or vengeance).

I think we'll be hearing more of the real story as the years go on, just as with JFK. This Susan Lindauer book is an example of that. She was a CIA asset whose second cousin is Andrew Card. She was imprisoned for a year after claiming that 9/11 was discussed in advance by elements of our government in her presence. She also claims Mossad was involved, and that Mohammed Atta was CIA.

It took until 1977 before the Church committee looked at JFK and said it was a probable conspiracy. Now it appears to be accepted knowledge that the mysterious comings and going of Lee Harvey Oswald happened because he was working for the CIA as well. Perhaps he was being manipulated to take the fall for a coup d'etat, and then be eliminated shortly afterwards.

Lindauer's main point was that Iraq was willing to give us virtually anything we wanted in the 90s to end the sanctions, but that would have left out the military industrial complex and Israel - a country that wanted the US to invade Iraq. She believes the hijackings were real, but the cells were run - not by jihadists - but by people working for us. She also believes that Cheney was involved. He did take control of the many war games scheduled on those dates - war games that neutralized our defenses and allowed the plot to succeed. There are tons of suspicious details, all hidden by the admirable fact that most people are too decent to contemplate something this diabolical. But as the years continue, and emotions subside, we will have a clearer view of what occurred.

Of course, this is a day to remember those who were lost, but to do that we have to address what happened. We owe the victims that much. Even the 9/11 commission scoffs at what they were given as the official story. Why not release the classified stuff? Lindauer says that there were tapes of vans arriving in the days before the attack to wire the towers. She says she was also specifically warned to stay out of New York as the date approached by her CIA handler. Then there's the stock activity, etc, and on and on. Why not let it all out if there's nothing for the government to hide?

One point that was not yet obvious at the time: The willingness of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to kill thousands of Americans based on lies. They would prove their capacity to do that later with the War in Iraq. To ask a young soldier to lose a limb or a life fighting for something that was manufactured out of spin, is a very sick crime, yet, we know that happened. All the feel-good book tours in the world won't change that.

Part of the reason the Neo-Cons were able to use 9/11 to destroy our freedoms and implement their agenda, is that we had no idea what they were capable of in those early innocent days 10 years ago. We should be starting to figure it out by now.

Let's not get too carried away and invested in either direction, because then it boils down to fantasmagoric partisan conspiracy theories on the one hand versus supposedly scientific but highly contrived debunking explanations on the other.

"Scientific" explanations notwithstanding, the way WTC 7 fell and the fact that it fell at all is at the very least odd. The notion that the building was pre-configured for a controlled demolition (together with the far-reaching implications of that) is also at the very least odd. We are left with competing oddities from which to choose. What would Occam's Razor predict?

I'm sure there is far more to the story of WTC 7 than we will know in this lifetime.

I prefer to stick to facts.

9/11 was the death of thousands of people. From that point on our lives changed and not for the better.

It gave some an excuse to begin a never-ending war, it gave some an excuse to air their prejudices with tacit approval of the powers that be. It cost thousands of servicemen their lives and limbs. It gave some the ability to shrug off civilian deaths as "collateral damage".

And in the end, Bin Laden got most of what he sought to do.

However, it turned some of us hawks into doves. Maybe when the next attack happens, we won't be as willing to lose our minds, and maybe the next war will be the last war.

9/11 is a time to mourn our dead, and also a time to examine ourselves. It will probably happen again, let's hope we can deal with it better.

How are you associating my comments with " "Truther" "Birther" "Tea Bagger"?"

You undermine your own argument by introducing fallacies from the beginning. By the way, it's "Tea Partier." "Tea Bagger" refers to a specific sexual activity that you can research on your own.

And "other white meat," I'm still anxiously awaiting enlightenment on the nefarious sources of the "debunking 9-11" website. You claim to know who runs the site. Why not share your knowledge with us?

I agree with the Ocamm's Razor analogy. That's why additional layers of complexity only serve to further confuse the issue. And no, I'm no lover of any political administration. But the suggestion that 9-11 was an "inside job" is just plain moronic and a strong indicator of the stupification of the American public. More willing to believe in dark shadows than scientific evidence.

IF such a diabolical plot existed and was carried out there is no hope for the United States or the rest of the world.
In the present, listening to Paul Simon sing The Songs of Silence, written nearly 50 years ago after JFK was assassinated, at today's memorial was for me, a very moving experience.
I have lived through too many national tragedies. I hope there are no more in my lifetime. But I am not hopeful...

Barney, not only diesel for the building itself, as irony would have it, Guiliani stocked a supply for City emergency vehicles in the event of an emergency when he build his Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor a couple of years earlier. News reports mentioned that 7 was build above a ConEd substation which may have weakened it's stability.

No "OWM" I'm just not your type of American. You know the kind of guy that loathes everything good about the country. Who's pissed off that other people have done better then you, and it disturbs you that there are people in this country who just don't agree with your view of the country.

You see them/us as little simpletons who don't have the brains to realize that they/we are being played by the man or group of men who really run the country.

So you call those that disagree with you Nazi's and nationalists.I bet you call them racists too for good measure and just chuckle away when you see on TV at those simpletons and their little gatherings.

So "OWM" just sit there at home behind your tightly drawn curtains, and revel in the fact that only you know the truth and how much more of an American you are then us poor bastards and our outdated views of the country.

Thank God for Charles Krauthammer. And Christopher Hitchens. And Mark Steyn. And Jack Bog. (Although the North WTC demolition stuff is just beyond my readiness to indulge. I would prefer to make chili, with extra ancho.)

I agree with the Ocamm's Razor analogy
Occam's Razor isn't an "analogy".

You know the kind of guy that loathes everything good about the country

Which good am I loathing, exactly? Again, superficialities.

So you call those that disagree with you Nazi's and nationalists

Never did. I did compare the use of "Homeland" to the use of Fatherland and Motherland, though. You don't actually know what that means, do you?

and revel in the fact that only you know the truth and how much more of an American you are then us poor bastards and our outdated views of the country.

I don't, but I can see how it makes it easier for you to sound righteousand humble. I'll tell you what I do know--I'm often ashamed of my country and its government. You'll generalize that into something it's not, but I don't care. The fact that somebody could feel that way and still love the country they live in is, no doubt, a view that makes many heads explode.

Do you know the one single fact that blows up (sorry pun not intended) the entire "Bush let/made it made it happen" theory ?
The conspiracy would be so large and complicated and involve so many people that someone would have spilled the beans..

Not to mention the fact that apparently the "gubment" was so clever to anticipate and plan the most horrendous event of the 21st century, that they forgot (in all their villainous and heinous wisdom) to think that maybe a "controlled demolition" would look like a controlled demolition to the general population. Right...

If they wanted to start a war and change the culture of America and the world, they could have simply shot down a passenger jet over the Atlantic, blamed it on the "enemy" and achieved the same results.

Long time ago I was working with a Northern railroad crew in the deep South. The owners of the hotel we were staying at wanted to give us a big send off meal at their home for our excellent conduct while staying in their lodging. Thing was, we'd have to get a to go plate for the colored boy.

Most of us didn't go to the meal, but we all remained civil to our hosts, though saddened by their failing.

Feel the same way when reading sympathy here for the 9/11 WTC 7 conspiracy business.

I worked in both WTC, and One Liberty Plaza, very near building 7. Lost close friends on 9-11, one at E-Speed (Cantor) on 109th floor (between 1978-2001). I was on my cell as my buddy was coming out of the subway near Century 21, and bodies were smashing into the ground like water mellons. Just this weekend a British paper was speculating about the 'jumpers' from the North tower, whether or not they committed suicide. My friend may have been one of those jumpers. It is so hideous to even think of.

So, when you get people telling me about second cousins and all kinds of BS, I am reminded of "Them"

"Them" are the people the conspirators like the tin foil hat crowd here would have you believe not only this building but the OKC building were controlled explosions. Andy Card's second cousin? I heard it was his 4th cousin, twice removed. Mohammed Atta was CIA? What fu***n drugs are these people on? I am no expert. But I have the entire destruction of the WTC complex etched forever in my mind. Losing close friends does that.

If something can be easily explained it usually is the first thing that was explained. That's life. Sorry.

The Internet is a great place. Full of valuable information. But some of the crap that people try passing off as 'amazing but true,' just ain't so.

9-11 was a REAL event. Amazingly simple in they way it was pulled off. The damage it did was tremendous. All the people on the planes died upon impact. The steel straps that supported each floor of WTC 1&2 were stressed by a high temperature fire of aviation fuel. The planes were almost all full of the jet fuel. The conflagration severely damaged One Liberty Plaza. So much so that it had to be demolished. The Wintergarden at the WFC across the street was severely damaged. Building 7 was on fire for hours before it succumbed to the fuel stored there for heat and generators. If you never saw the footprint, you should.

That's all I know. But I will venture to say it is multiples more than some of the pure garbage I have read here.

For those "birthers" of the left who believe there was a WTC conspiracy, you must realize that something that large and complicated would probably require the cooperation of politicians, non-politicians, law enforcement, civilians, etc. including those on both ends of the political spectrum. Yet nobody is talking? Wikileaks can't even get the story out with substantiated evidence?

Besides that, do you really think that now, in today's most heated partisan political arena, those worried about Obama's chances in 2012 would ignore evidence of a legitimate "right wing conspiracy?" If Bush and Cheney were the masterminds, I suspect the quite immediate downfall of the Republican party and Democrats toasting champagne.

Barney, I too have friends and relatives who were eyewitnesses. One ran from a nearby building and was nearly hit by jumpers.

No one is denying that 1 and 2 were hit by the jets. Anyone who denies that is a complete kook. And there are many kooks out there.

But to me, WTC 7 looks as though it was imploded. There is other evidence that indicates that it was purposefully brought down. I don't know who would have done that or why. We can only speculate. The official explanation about that one building seems implausible.

Being disrespectful to other people who are asking legitimate questions is not a good way to honor the dead.

This is sounding more like a warped version of The Manchurian Candidate by the minute, except it isn't the Chinese and Soviets that have planted someone in the White House, it is the ever present military-industrial complex. Yet those on either side of the aisle, from the Ron Paulites who are skeptical of any government to those on the extreme left who abhor the Defense Department budgets, all keep quiet? Nobody in America can keep a secret.

It's interesting when someone near you dies in a horrible way. I used to sit in my dorm room and get drunk and fantasize about what I'd like to do to the people who threw phosphorous grenades onto a loaded Pan Am jetliner through both doors so the passengers had to scramble in the dark as they burned to death. My friend whom I knew from around 5th grade to college, was identified by his shoes.

I can say I crossed to the dark side. I never just wanted to kill random strangers, but I wanted to hurt the people who killed my friend in the worst way. Incidentally, they weren't killed in the attack - I have a picture of them flashing a victory sign as they were taken into custody, probably to be released a little later.

I've spent a lifetime dealing with that. A hell of a lot longer than 10 years. I know how you want to lash out. But come on people: Torture? Attacking countries that had nothing to do with it? That's not America. When you give into the rage, you lose who you are.

Barney, you're angry. I understand that, but there's nothing wrong with examining what happened closely here. It could prevent it from happening again. If these theories strike you as pure garbage than you're convinced that you know what happened. So let us have the opportunity to come to that realization with you. Don't we deserve to know? And if you're not right, we owe it to the victims here to find out.

It could help America. Osama bin Ladin used to work for us. That's a fact. We supported him. We trained him. Do you want your government signing up the next Osama bin Ladin?

Let's get the facts out in the open. If we know, maybe we'll be less afraid. They've eroded our freedoms in the name of keeping us safe. I liked the way America was before such things as the Patriot Act. I feel it's the right thing to do to try and get back to how we used to be.

Right now we're still enraged, and rage can make someone do horrendous things, but when you go in that little room and torture a detainee, he comes out differently, but so do you. We've got to be careful not to hurt our spirits anymore.

I've been to the dark side - it's not the answer. You end up feeling terrible so I came back. Now I'd like to see America come back.
Investigate 9/11.

Wikipedia examines all the conspiracy arguments including those that claim a missile hit the Pentagon and the Air Force deliberately shot down the plane over Pennsylvania. If, after looking at the evidence, you can still claim that all four planes were part of a US government plot, I'd like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

I spent 16 months in Vietnam. I knew and saw people who died. Such as, a helo crash, 11 people dead, all of whom were friends. Another friend in the bush, a bullet goes in his left eye and exits out the back of his head. No conspiracy going on here. Certainly LBJ and McNamara didn't deviously plan these deaths, at least not, per se. Political explanations don't cut it in 99.99999% of the cases. You may never get it because of your partisan biases, but Bush and Cheney are and were honorable men, doing what they thought was right in the circumstances then extant. McDonald, get over it. Unlessing of course you're equally willing to lay personally at Obama's feet all the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since January 20, 2009. Me, I'm not.

As for me, I want to honor the innocent men and women who were murdered by Islam Extremists who hijacked four planes. Yes, they were all members of the same extremist religion, Radical Islam that wants to kill all infidels, both Little Satan and Great Satan. Ala Akbar, indeed.

And rather than blame American government, and American politicians who happen to be part of the political party that you love to hate, I prefer to blame Islamic Extremists and the countries that we all saw celebrating the deaths of 3000 civilians from many countries and many faiths. Celebrating their deaths only because they worked in NYC and lived in American; for that reason alone Osama felt they must die. A rather extremist thought, in my opinion.

rather than blame American government, and American politicians who happen to be part of the political party that you love to hate

I don't know who may have imploded WTC 7. Maybe it was the landlord, trying to get insurance proceeds. Maybe it was the FDNY, who wanted it to fall in an orderly way rather than collapsing in an unpredictable way. But it just doesn't look as though it spontaneously collapsed. No matter how much diesel fuel was stored in it.

As far as partisanship, Obama has been every bit as gung ho as Bush in Afghanistan. Maybe more so.

When the military was spraying their own and innocents with Agent Orange in Viet Nam,(yes, the GI's were dispensable as were deemed the Hanford down-winders in this area by the military planners and G.E. before them), the honorable Cheney was frantically filing his reams of 5 military deferments. And the honorable Bush was hiding behind that silver spoon shield.

My Mom served in the Red Cross in France during World War 2, helping thousands of U.S. soldiers. She literally could not watch a military band in a parade afterwards because she became too choked up thinking of "her boys" - the American soldiers who won World War 2, many of whom she had consoled right after they were wounded in some of the most famous battles in history.

One day, we were talking about Bosnia and I said, "Isn't it incredible that no Americans have been killed in that?" And she said, "Yeah, if you believe what the government is telling us."

Questioning the government is as American as it gets. If we had done our due diligence with Iraq we could have saved thousands of soldiers from death and many more from horrible wounds, both physical and mental.

To say, as boycat has here, that we're just supposed to "get over it" and accept the official story is a disgrace and a sellout to the many men and women who fought on foreign shores to give us the freedom to question our leaders, rather than follow them like blind sheep.

boycat - Do you really need a lesson in the history of Viet Nam? I am more than happy to go there. First the CIA was directly responsible for the murder of Ngo Diem and subsequent coup. This was the beginning of serious US involvement over there.

Second of all, the whole of that war was because the oil companies thought there was oil in the Gulf of Tonkin. Once again, corporate interests were setting national policy.

Third, I went to college with children of a ranking official of the Viet Namese government in the 1970s. His kids were at several premier schools in the NE and driving Mercedes Benz as students and flying to Paris fairly regularly. The also looked down their noses on Americans as racially inferior. That was a shock to me. But then their country didn't exactly have colleges and universities to compete with ours so great irony.

That family was also involved in a pharmaceutical company that was responsible for hooking US GIs on hard core drugs.

And when Saigon fell, they got relocation money that paid for a place in Hawaii.

Meanwhile while we are involved in a nation that we should have left alone, we were also propping up the Shah of Iran (and kids of his cabinet members were also going to those same prestigious schools in the NE) which would have bigger consequences later.

Don't be silly, Bill--King George only has the best interest of the Colonies and his subjects at heart. Do you think the Crown would actually be taxing us and instituting harsh laws for devious reasons? The King does not lie to his subjects, or go to war for any reason other than defending the kingdom.

Come now, Bill. Why do you hate the soverign Crown? Many of our brave British soldiers died defending the freedom of the Colonies and your freedoms. Get over it.

Questioning the motivations and the decisions made on how to tackle a crisis is American and is reasonable.

Questioning whether a politician or administration may have exaggerated a crisis to achieve an agenda is American and is reasonable.

Where I draw the line is questioning or suggesting that the same politician or administration went to such significant lengths (committing 3,000 + acts of murder in a vast conspiracy) to pre-justify the first two answers.

Exaggerating WMD to get into Iraq? Easy (hey, Bush and Cheney pulled it off and everyone bought into it without much hesitation).

Purposely killing citizens to invade Afghanistan, of all places? Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Purposely killing citizens to invade Afghanistan, of all places? Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Yeah, I agree--I mean, when has the US Government ever attacked its own citizens? And it's not like we've ever used chemicals (Agent Orange) or anything (Depleted uranium) that we knew would maim and kill our own citizens or anything.

I grew up in a suburb in Westchester County New York that was essentially a feeder community for Wall Street.Like my peers from the Republican families that were the bedrock of my community, I did a lot of the "right" things. To wit: I was educated at a New England boarding school, a Jesuit high school in New York City, a Jesuit University in New York City and a Jesuit University in Washington, D.C.. However, I was fortunate enough at a certain point to have developed a viewpoint and ambitions that differed from those of many of my peers and ended up at a law school in Oregon, rather than on Wall Street. That was one reason why I didn't die in the towers that day as SEVEN of neighbors and schoolmates did. One of them was William (Billy) Wick who lived down the block from me and with whom I attended school for eight years. Billy's body was found in a cavity of the rubble along with the six firefighters whom he led back into the second tower to fall in order to rescue some trapped people he had left behind. Life changed in my old neighborhood that day in ways that will persist until all of the survivors have died. So much hurt... And what is so infuriating to consider is what I consider to be THE GREAT LIKELIHOOD that my friends and neighbors were murdered by rogue elements of a government whom they, loyal Republicans all, helped elect. God help us all. The terrorists, whether they were directed by Al Quaeda, Mossad, the CIA, or some unimaginable combination of all of them, scored an overwhelmingly victory on 9/11/01, as the deterioration of our civil discourse, civil liberties, governmental competency and economy over the last 10 years has demonstrated.

America's been attacked by terrorists many times, on its own soil. We just don't call Americans who go on campus shooting rampages or who blow up federal buildings, terrorists.

Where are the lamentations and weeping for the Americans killed in the Oklahoma City bombing? Where are the 100 story skyscaper memorials for everybody who died at Virginia Tech?

They don't exist.

You see, we're very selective about who and what we memorialize. We're a righteous lot, and we don't want to memorialize just *anything*. There's got to be some "foreign" element, some sinister, evil plot by single-minded-non-English-speaking-non-white Democraphobes before we'll waste our tears.

And killing hundreds (and maybe thousands) of women, children, and olf folks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, (insert your global war effort of the last 50 years here)? Those don't count. They didn't happen here. Casualties of War. Sorry about that.

I've had enough of the hypocritical, self-righteous chest-beating of a country gone half-insane and willing, apaprently, to believe or do just about anything that allays their fears a little.

This is a democracy? A country where the police forces are armed to the teeth with heavy assault weapons, grenade launchers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, robots, drones? Overtly military uniforms, codes, shaved heads, increasingly aggressive treatment of citizens?

Those invalid minds constrained on the OCT, (the Official Conspiracy Theory), have no evidence for it.

The empty evidence folder is Exhibit A (of thousands of exhibits) proving beyond a reasonable doubt with a preponderance of evidence that the Official Order hate-Muslims propaganda is total fiction. Truth-finders shun and reject fiction.

Just mocking the weak-minded minority who believe Bush lies, here is a fresh fabulous 5-minute video listing those lies:

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subject, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events. It is always the other way around. Why do you think that is? There are good reasons for this, and I will try to explain this phenomenon right now.

The term "conspiracy theorist", perhaps the most misapplied description in our vernacular, is often used to describe 9/11 truthers. Perhaps that term does apply to a segment of the 9/11 truth movement. But in most cases a more accurate description of 9/11 truthers is probably "expert", or "scholar", or "researcher." You see, much of the doubt cast on the official narrative of the events of 9/11 has not come in the form of speculated accusations, or "theories." In fact, it has come in the form of questions that have been raised after a careful study ....

NEW YORK — In a moving and beautiful ceremony held atop Lower Manhattan's gleaming, 120-story-tall Freedom Tower, the nation commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by raising a glass to the stable democracy of Afghanistan and to a decade of unprecedented peace and prosperity across the globe.

The Freedom Tower's annual 9/11 ceremony, which has taken place every year since the architectural masterpiece's swift completion in 2004, was founded to honor the victims of the terrorist act committed by al-Qaeda, a militant Islamist group that was eradicated following the swift capture of their leader, Osama bin Laden, three months after Sept. 11, 2001.

As always, members of the multiple mosques nearby were welcomed to the ceremony with open arms, and Afghan foreign-exchange students arrived bearing gifts of flowers from their grateful nation, a reminder to many in attendance that the course of history after that crucial day could have taken a drastically different turn.

"To think, what could have been merely a grim, pathetic reminder of our own pain and subsequent failure has instead been reclaimed by this great nation as a reminder of our success, our resiliency, and our core American values of decency and love," said Bush, who departed later that night for a climate change conference in China. "Thank God we had the courage, intelligence, and foresight to react the way we did after the worst day in American history."

"And thank God we didn't make a huge mistake by needlessly invading a country like Iraq," Bush added. "If we had, I guarantee you none of us would be standing here today."

Road Work

Miles run year to date: 155
At this date last year: 241
Total run in 2015: 271
In 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269